Laila Lalami

Heads In The Sand

Finally! It looks like that little feud is picking up. Actually, maybe I shouldn’t have called it a feud, since a feud presumably involves two parties, and as far as I know Irvine Welsh has refrained from responding to Alexander McCall Smith’s inane accusations. (Plus, Smith is trying to take back what he said.) But feud or not, AL Kennedy takes a stance in this piece for the Guardian:

It has come to my attention that even more Scottish people are typing now than in former, lovelier times. This may be the result of mass hysteria and poor hygiene, or may stem from a certain linguistic facility nourished by the Scottish education system (now finally deceased) and certain misguided traditions of self-education.
Whatever the cause, Scots must face the fact that – no matter how many well-meaning publishers open branch offices North of The Border – most of the writing produced will be of quite the Wrong Sort.

She goes on like this in her inimitable style and then concludes:

And, of course, Scotland today is justly renowned as a land entirely without poverty and crime. No one who lives here is ever lonely, or upset, ill, or worried, no one loses their job, raises their voice, swears, dislikes the weather or has a mild headache for a while. Our local and national government are not inefficient and corrupt and our executive’s Holyrood premises won’t eventually cost more than building a Scottish embassy on Mars. In short, we have no reason whatsoever to write anything other than lovely, slightly dusty histories, or fables involving Africa and Nice Ladies.

Good for her, I say.

This entry was posted
on Saturday, January 10th, 2004 at 8:43 pm and is filed under literary life.
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